I'm a privacy pragmatist, writing about the intersection of law, technology, social media and our personal information. If you have story ideas or tips, e-mail me at khill@forbes.com. PGP key here.
These days, I'm a senior online editor at Forbes. I was previously an editor at Above the Law, a legal blog, relying on the legal knowledge gained from two years working for corporate law firm Covington & Burling -- a Cliff's Notes version of law school.
In the past, I've been found slaving away as an intern in midtown Manhattan at The Week Magazine, in Hong Kong at the International Herald Tribune, and in D.C. at the Washington Examiner. I also spent a few years traveling the world managing educational programs for international journalists for the National Press Foundation.
I have few illusions about privacy -- feel free to follow me on Twitter: kashhill, subscribe to me on Facebook, Circle me on Google+, or use Google Maps to figure out where the Forbes San Francisco bureau is, and come a-knockin'.

Spotify Scares Off Facebook Oversharer

Mercury News columnist Chris O’Brien used to love spilling his digital guts all over Facebook.

“While many people fret about oversharing and privacy, I’m more than happy to have every tidbit of my digital life channeled through Facebook,” he writes. But no more. Facebook’s frictionless sharing — through which your activity on other sites is automatically shared back publicly on Facebook — has scared him off. Why? Because his kids were “handed the keys” to his Facebook kingdom thanks to the social giant’s integration with Spotify.

When I saw this with Spotify last summer, I was thrilled. I’m a huge music fan and the ease with which I could share every song I heard felt awesome. At the same time, I loved being able to see what friends were playing as they played it. Even better, I could now click on a button on Facebook that let me listen along with them.

The problems began a couple of months later. My kids at home were listening to Spotify using my account, which automatically shared their tunes with my Facebook friends. While at work, my Facebook page would record that I was listening to all sorts of kids’ music, or appalling selections from the likes of Justin Bieber. Friends would post snarky comments mocking me for my lame musical taste.

O’Brien says he’s now turned off all of his frictionless sharing apps. The crux of his argument is that because he shares a computer with his family, their activity on sites linked to Facebook is “polluting” his profile.

While he’s certainly not the first to make the argument that frictionless sharing is ruining Facebook, I’d argue he should just sign out of Facebook when he’s not at the computer but that solution seems not to have occurred to him.

It does illustrate a point made recently by The Next Web about Facebook’s “feature creep.” As Facebook adds new bells and whistles to the site, some users are going to get frustrated as it becomes more difficult to use the site simply to communicate with friends. As Drew Olanoff puts it, “so many new features are becoming available that they may cloud out Facebook’s most basic function,” which is, obviously, allowing users to stalk their friends and pseudo-strangers without fear of pollution.

Post Your Comment

Post Your Reply

Forbes writers have the ability to call out member comments they find particularly interesting. Called-out comments are highlighted across the Forbes network. You'll be notified if your comment is called out.

Comments

It sucks if you’re late to the party and didn’t sign up for spotify before they started forcing new users to log in with Facebook. Why can’t they offer a non-facebook sign up option like they did before?

I’m confused. I log into my Spotify account through Facebook. But there is an option for not sharing your listening habits on your Facebook timeline. Are this guy’s kids changing his settings while grooving out to their auto-tuned top 40 hits?

Chris O’Brien, you’re one of the people that makes the Internet suck sometimes. Please, stop. Right now. Just, stop.

I put over-sharers just one rung above you-tube comment-trolls (which are, themselves, one rung above Yahoo comment-trolls). They make Facebook suck more for everyone else. Because of people like Chris O’Brien, I have to constantly cull FB, because no one ever warns me when sending a friend request, “btw, I spew 80+ updates per hour through a mix of status updates and frictionless sharing”

Fortunately I’ve now learned how to more easily unsubscribe from your ilk, Chris O’Brien, but you still make the Internet suck. Please stop- it isn’t your kids’ fault, it is your fault.

Your friends weren’t making fun of you for listening to the Biebs- they were making fun of you for being on a rung below most Beliebers themselves.

Oh so true- I’ve heard that this is something that happened almost exclusively with the rock music of that era, but my dad trained me to listen to good music- he introduced us to SRV, Hendrix, The Who, Led Zepillin, Yes, Pink Floyd, the Beatles, etc.

He didn’t have to worry about us listening to the crappy pop of our generation (Hansen, Spice Girls, Backstreet Boys, N*Sync, Brittany Spears, etc.) because he had trained us better.